Leahy, Specter to Mukasey: Honeymoon over. What did the DOJ know about the torture tapes?

TPM:

Leahy and Specter, the leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee, wrote yesterday to Attorney General Michael Mukasey requesting a thorough understanding of the Justice Department's inquiry into the CIA's destruction of secret interrogation tapes. If Mukasey ever had a honeymoon at DoJ, it's already a distant memory.

The Dyspeptic Duo demand to know what the Justice Department knew about the tapes before their destruction -- after all, DoJ warned against junking them, so someone at DoJ knew they existed. And in a press release accompanying the letter, they threaten to turn next week's confirmation hearing for Mukasey's would-be deputy, Mark Filip, into "a public forum for Senators to query Filip about the Department of Justice’s reported investigation."

Full text of the letter follows the jump.
Read more »